CNH: Impacts of Global Change Scenarios on Ecosystem Services from the World's Rivers

水是地球系统的基本组成部分，对人类的繁荣至关重要。与此同时，人类正在迅速地将自己融入水循环的基本特征中，却没有充分认识其后果。水系变化的主要原因包括管理不善和过度利用、河流水流扭曲、污染、流域干扰、物种入侵和温室变暖。界定这种变化的集体意义对地球科学和社会科学都是一项重大挑战。该项目将促进目前对人类控制、退化或增强与水有关的生态系统服务的方式的理解，进而影响全球经济系统和水生生物多样性。这些目标将通过人与水相互作用的综合跨学科研究来实现，包括建模、数据集成和评估工具，以及水资源管理、生物学和环境经济学观点的综合。模型预测将用于将最近的趋势延伸到未来，并评估在100年的时间范围内，替代管理战略能在多大程度上导致更可持续的未来。塑造现代河流系统的许多力量的跨学科方面为合作提供了丰富的知识环境，通过该项目的跨学科方法获得的经验教训构成了这项工作的重要副产品。鉴于水在我们的环境和人类福祉中的中心作用，这个项目的结果将对管理淡水资源的努力具有直接价值。除了科学价值之外，考虑到水作为一个国际安全问题日益紧迫的意识，对河流系统（为人类服务的最大的可再生水源）状况的综合理解对公共政策部门具有战略重要性。这种综合的好处将为全球社会和环境管理挑战提供信息：应对极端气候；保护生态系统服务和生物多样性；粮食和能源安全；经济竞争力;保护人类健康。该项目将以政策相关科学为目标，教育下一代学生进行战略资源评估，并向公民宣传未来的主要环境挑战和解决方案，从而产生持久的效益。

Water is an essential building block of the Earth system and critical to human prosperity. At the same time, humans are rapidly embedding themselves into the basic character of the water cycle without full knowledge of the consequences. Major sources of water system change include mismanagement and overuse, river flow distortion, pollution, watershed disturbance, invasive species, and greenhouse warming. Defining the collective significance of such change constitutes a major challenge for the Earth and social sciences alike. This project will advance current understanding of the ways in which humans control, degrade or enhance water-related ecosystem services, and in turn impact the global economic system and aquatic biodiversity. These goals will be addressed through an integrated, interdisciplinary study of human-water interactions that includes modeling, data integration, and assessment tools as well as synthesis across water resource management, biology, and environmental economics perspectives. Model projections will be used to extend recent trends into the future, and assess the degree to which alternative management strategies can lead to more sustainable futures over a 100-year time horizon. The interdisciplinary aspects of the many forces shaping modern river systems provide a rich intellectual environment for collaboration, and lessons learned through this project's cross-disciplinary approaches constitute an important byproduct of the work.Given the central role of water in our environment and human well-being, results from this project will have immediate value to efforts to manage freshwater resources. Beyond its scientific value, a synthetic understanding of the state of the rivers systems--the single largest renewable water supply serving humankind--is of strategic importance to the public policy sector, given a growing sense of urgency regarding water as an international security issue. The benefits of such synthesis will inform global social and environmental management challenges: coping with climate extremes; preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity; food and energy security; economic competitiveness; and, protecting human health. This project will have lasting benefits by targeting policy-relevant science, educating the next generation of students in strategic resource assessment, and informing the citizenry about major environmental challenges and solutions for the future.